COMMANDER ROD

Brazilian Voice Actor, Leftist, Pro-Palestine

[tuefelhundenivfictions]

Hot Days, Arrival on Klendathu

A Helldiver 2 Character story of how my Helldiver wound up joining the 95th Helldiver Division Rods Roughnecks.

Clan lore is that most of the clan are misfits or political outcasts. Borderline Chaos Divers at times but loyal to the world, each other, and the citizens of the Federation. Loyalty to the Government is dead last.

------------- Frozen Dreams -------------

He was back there again. It was the one thing he couldn't escape, awake or asleep. It was always there. The dark, humid night was softly lit by the navy blue moon. The smell of old, damp plant decay and the fertile, spicy scent of exotic flora competed with the pungent odors of sweat, gun oil, and the faint aroma of heated field rations, which seemed to cling to everyone for weeks.

Dreams, memories, ghosts of his past, whatever you wanted to call them, still haunted his sleep and sometimes his wakefulness. This time, he had been cryogenically frozen for a transfer to his new duty station.

The lab coats swore up and down that you didn't dream in cryo. But every single person who had spent more than a day in the tubes knew better. It wasn't that you didn't dream; it took longer for the dreams to settle into your mind as if the bone-deep cold slowed the dreams' arrival to your sleeping mind to a crawl.

This time, the dream was of a jungle hell filled with the eerie and haunting clattering scream of the bots' digital communications, interspersed with a few intelligible words in one of several languages. The echoes of their alien mechanical chatter frightened any local fauna into silence. There was the false hope that you were safe if the jungle was alive with animal noises.

The nights were filled with the realization that a bot that had entered hibernation mode could wake up in the night to hunt humans. Even the noise of jungle life was no succor. When the bots were quiescent, the wildlife got loud and active in the brush. That just hid the small sounds that might alert you or give you false confidence, dulling your senses.

The worst of the bots were the Berserkers; the other bots sometimes camouflaged a hibernating squad of the terrifying machines with jungle foliage. They could wait silently for days or even weeks. Patrols would walk by without ever seeing them, unaware of their presence. The terror started with them bursting from the foliage at some unknown signal or trigger. At that point, they would burst forth from the concealing foliage; creepers and vines clinging to their metal bodies, roaring in rage, their chainsaw-blade arms screaming with the bots' murderous intent.

Worse was discovering Berserkers by accident, having them suddenly lunge into motion once they figured out they had been detected. Minesweeper teams using metal detectors were attacked the most when the warning signal in their headsets indicated the presence of a threat. The scanner equipment, designed to detect camouflaged anti-personnel mines, also picked up hidden bots.

The sweeper teams often only had the brief squeal of detecting a large mass of metal or electronics before the nightmarish machines were upon them. It was a matter of moments to see if their escorts could save them from being hacked into bloody ribbons, their blood and bodily internals sprayed across the leaf mold of the jungle floor if their protectors failed.

Other horrors, both born of the night and day, were spawned by the world. Most often, it was the bots and their harsh and murderous intentions. Sometimes, the rare hungry predator would creep up at night and snatch an unwary sentry. Sometimes it was stepping into a stinging insect nest, and the swarms covering a victim in biting stinging monsters that killed them in seconds.

Tonight's night terror was not one gifted to him by the bots or the jungle; it was from a traitorous commander of a SEAF detachment. The coward had been part of the growing human trafficking network that the war had uncovered. Its oily tendrils drifted from Super Earth and trailed to the rim worlds. The Commander had abused their military authority and political connections to connect to a network of human trafficking and black market rings.

Alexander Zebulon "Teufel Hunden" or just Teufel had been attached to a team of Special Forces Helldiver Infiltrators and their SEAF special forces detachment squad. Their team intel expert, "Banshee", had uncovered one of the operations. Banshee had been finding unusual electronic network activity both in the past and the present when they were trying to locate an emergency evacuation bunker. By the time they had realized what they had uncovered, nearly all of them would be dead. Only Teufel and Banshee would ultimately survive.

The first sign that there was trouble was the incoming artillery fire that they believed was in support. The troopers believed the friendly incoming artillery fire was directed at an Automaton assault force that had overrun an unknown human element in the jungle. The initial shell fire fell on that position. None of their group had called it in. They believed it was the unknown human force whose sporadic and dwindling gunfire they had heard before the shells started to fall against the backdrop of a bot assault. What they had thought was the final protective fire of artillery called in by desperate human forces nearby turned out to be a crooked SEAF commander covering his tracks.

The initial barrage on the mystery position had barely seemed to lift before the shells began to fall on their position instead. The flash and booming explosion were those of heavy artillery firing from a long distance out. None of the red strobing blasts of bot-heavy mortars, but the dirty orange-yellow bursts of high explosives used by the SEAF forces galaxy-wide.

The initial volley had caught them by surprise, but Teufel and Banshee had been caught out at the periphery, setting up a listening and observation post. At the same time, the SEAF Special Forces troops and the other two Helldiver Special Forces operatives worked on extracting the civilians to the evacuation shuttle that sat sheltered in a protected landing pad nearby.

The heavy shells' initial blast was powerful enough to knock Teufel clean off his feet while Banshee was kneeling by a communications tower splicing into the network to extend their communications coverage. The heavy shells fell fast and covered the entire exterior area of the compound. The shell falls, boxing in anyone inside the area, trapping them, caging them into a final kill box.

The heavy shell fire paused for a minute before a new pattern of shell fire started to fall. This one was a general saturation pattern. The softer whoomph of the shell bursts was counterpointed by the bright, hot orange while fire of napalm shells. A few desultory shells landed on the human position in the jungle, but the rest were targeted at the facility. In less than thirty seconds, the entire compound was coated in fire. Banshee had been frantically trying to cancel the strike mission via the communications channels, but quickly discovered the local command center had jammed any communications out of their area.

As he rose to look for survivors, Banshee quickly stood up to grab Teufel's arm and stop him from going in too soon. Some strange survival sense hard-won on many fronts had warned Bansheethat something bad was about to happen. The call over the now clear radio channel proved her right. From the local SEAF army channels came a clear message. "SEAF heavy battery 217 Commencing final denial barrage. Shell code Star Fall, all units in the vicinity of the target seek cover." Teufel stopped mid-stride, Banshee tugging at his arm and pointing into the jungle. As he looked to Banshee, about to ask what the target was, that was when the last shells whistled overhead.

Shell Code Star Fall were nuclear shells, from heavy artillery, they were more potent than the average Hellbomb and reserved for destruction of hard targets, killing enemy formations with heavy units, or destroying local assets and leaving a smoking crater that would be irradiated for the next few days. As soon as the whistle reached their ears, they were running.

The first of the powerful shells hit the position in the jungle. The bright actinic flash was followed by the hammer blow of the blast wave, gouging a crater over twenty meters wide and ten deep in the jungle floor, flinging jungle debris and metallic remains of bots in every direction. The nuclear blast obliterated anything remotely organic.

The next shells fell almost simultaneously on the extraction center and the hangar. The civilians in the bunker never knew what hit them as the heavy shell burrowed deeply into the reinforced concrete and detonated, sending structural pieces rocketing in all directions, riding the blast wave. The other shell hit the evacuation shuttles' shelter, punching through the thin roof doors that would slide open and obliterating it similarly. The twinned blast likewise flung a massive swath of burning blast-driven debris scything into the jungle and the sky.

Tuefel and Banshee had been caught on the edge of the shell blast that had obliterated the facility. The overpressure blast wave had flung them both into the jungle. They had been lucky that none of the structural debris had hit them, but had carved a wide swath around the area out of the hot jungle night around them. Tuefel had been knocked out cold by the impact with a tree, his armor breached in several places, burned through the rents in his armor with several minor puncture wounds, and he also had numerous internal injuries that would have killed him had Banshee not gotten up quickly to save him.

Alexander came too with the sting of his body's tissues stitching themselves back together. The painful ache throbbing and singing through his body reminded him that he was alive. The brief endorphin and light adrenaline rush at the end helped him to start getting up. That moment in his dream was when he woke from the ebbing ache of healing tissue. He would see a blurry face outside the helmet. He had been curious about the face beneath that helmet that he had been staring at for over a month. Just as the features began to come into focus, the dream would end.

In his real memory, the face would reach up and pull their helmet down again. However, this was only a recurring dream triggered by the prolonged freeze in the cryo pods. The mental image fuzzed and faded as sensations of light and sound began to impinge on his unconscious mind. Alexander was starting to wake up. Banshee had saved him by pumping him full of so many stims he was surprised he hadn't grown extra limbs. The memory of Banshee saving him was the ringing memory that signaled his return to consciousness.

Whatever drifting dream memories lingered in his mind faded away as prickling pains and a rushing heat filled him from head to toe, and his whole being felt electrically alive. Alexander awoke sore and in pain from his dream-like memory. The last of the thawing process, a cocktail of drugs and chemicals pumped through his veins, woke him up at last. He found himself in the cryo pod, the hatch open, and fresh, hot air circulating through the room. That pain and soreness said he had been in the freeze for over a month.

He was lying back in the cryopod for long moments, blinking in the harsh lights of a sterile clinical room at the Crypod Interplanetary Immigration Center. He slowly breathed in long, deep breaths, feeling some of the phlegm from his irritated lungs as he breathed in a new, strange atmosphere pumped in from the outside and filtered to remove any microorganisms and other airborne contaminants.

He listened to his heart thudding steadily as his senses, unused to the environment, became hyperattuned. Five minutes, he thought. It would be five minutes before his body's autonomous system fully adjusted and his senses rebalanced to a state of normalcy. As his heart rate normalized, his hearing rebalanced, and the strange hyper senses dulled, he knew it was time to get moving. It had been some time since he had last done a long cryo-freeze for travelling.

As a Helldiver, he was used to the rapid freeze and thaw of deployments between stars. The periods of cryosleep rarely lasted longer than a week. If the Super Destroyer was engaged in active operations, it was seldom more than a day or two. With that last thought, Alexander decided it was time to get up and look at what was possibly his new life.

Both from training and a long personal habit, he began his routine of rousing from the deep cryonic slumber. He started by wiggling his toes and fingers, moving nothing else. Satisfied nothing was damaged, he began rotating his feet at the ankles and his hands at the wrists. The list of his extremities to move started to include his full limbs and eventually his hips, shoulders, and neck. Nothing felt out of place. The small amount of movement and exercise helped loosen the disused muscles and tendons, easing some of the pain and soreness.

Satisfied that nothing was overtly physically wrong, he sat up slowly, using the smooth edges of the cryopod to push himself up to a sitting position in the angled chamber. The crypod had been set into a frame, holding it off the ground over a series of drain grates at a forty-degree angle. His body felt strange, but the familiar sensation of his flesh and bones ebbed back into the physical sense of himself.

Sitting up and letting his thoughts settle, Alexander strained to listen to the room around him. The faint sound of dripping from the condensation and other fluids echoed faintly around the room. Other sounds in the background included the soft hiss of an announcement speaker on standby and the soft whirr of an air circulation fan. All of the noise was extremely loud to his disused ears, bordering on painful in pitch for some of the high-pitched noises.

Taking slow, deep breaths and deliberately blinking, he looked around the room and stared at the basic eyesight test posters on the wall before him. The immigration facility had placed the poster there to help those recently awakened to check their eyesight and basic cognitive function. It held the standard post-cryo thawing statement that everyone coming out of a freeze for immigration would have to read aloud.

His eyesight was slightly fuzzy before Alexander gently wiped away the gunk from his eyes. He sat there blinking for several seconds to get tears flowing, and squinted at the poster on the wall until it swam into focus. After reading it once quietly to himself, he started reading it out loud, feeling his voice catch in a flem-filled throat. He coughed and cleared his throat, spitting into the bottom of the cryopod where the waste fluids accumulated throughout all the cryopods' cycles. He would read the poster out loud in a second.

He had been through this process multiple times, but you did what you had to do in the Federation as a citizen, especially when you were a Helldiver. He gave one more chest-deep cough and a throat-clearing noise before spitting the last phlegm into the bottom of the pod, before beginning to read.

"I solemnly swear, having been awoken from my cryogenic transportation, that I, Alexander Zebulon, am fit and able to rise from my slumbers, to do my duties for the glory of the Federation and Super Earth. Should I discover any malady or flaw in myself, be it physical or mental, I will immediately report to the nearest medical facility for evaluation of my physical fitness and mental capability to be a citizen. I do so swear." Alexander had read aloud, his voice rapidly gaining its usual tenor tone.

Once the last word had faded from the room, a voice from a speaker mounted in the ceiling came in with a click. "Excellent Helldiver, glad to have you with us. Remove your cyro body suit and place it in the pod. Please rinse off in the corner shower and use the drying booth next to it. When you are done, then proceed to the medical examination room," the voice said, and then it clicked off again, indicating that the speaker was done with the conversation.

The softly pitched, feminine voice hadn't sounded like a recording and was clear with a smooth but unusual accent he couldn't place. He was definitely on a new world. His thoughts drifted to what blend of human cultures he would find. Every world had a mix of accents, cultures, and peoples. None of them was truly uniform with their Old Earth origins. He supposed he would find out soon enough.

Alexander clambered out of the pod to stand beside it on the nice, warm, heated floor. He was only wearing the basic body suit with sensors, all the long-term cryo-travel services, including the military ones, used to monitor their frozen cargo. The thin, rubber-like material clung tightly to his body, but he would soon be taking it off. What came next was something few enjoyed; the medical examination.

Alexander decided to get over the hard part and began to peel himself out of the body suit carefully. It came away with a slurping sound from the barrier fluids that coated his body, keeping it from injuring his skin while he wore it during the long sleep. When he finally pulled it away from his body, he placed the stretched, distorted suit in the crypod and walked over to a wall-mounted shower head in the corner of the room. Etched into a piece of stainless steel mounted on the wall were basic instructions for using the shower. Stand on the plate and wait for the rinse cycles to complete. The first cycle would be a cold water chemical rinse, during which he had to keep his eyes closed. This would remove the barrier fluid and disinfect his skin. The next was a warm rinse. Followed by a progressively warmer and warmer series of rinses that would end in a five-minute hot shower to loosen up his muscles and ensure the last of the chemicals and fluids had been rinsed from his body by the shower.

Alexander stood on a plate in the middle of a large drain in the floor with footprints etched into ait nd closed his eyes. The overhead shower head soon poured cold water over him in a deluge that lasted fifteen seconds but felt like forever. After a long thirty seconds of dripping and the increasing sensation of irritation from the chemicals, the rest of the rinse cycles started. Soon, he was standing in the hot water shower, making sure that everything was thoroughly rinsed off.

The last of the hot shower ended, and he stood there for a long minute, feeling his skin cooling in the air as water dripped from him. He swiped the water from his closely shorn hair and then his forehead, allowing him to see without water dripping into his eyes. He walked the few steps to the drying booth and stepped in.

The booth consisted of an open-bottomed cabinet-like structure with a drain in the bottom.. The panel walls were about as thick as his thumb and studded with numerous nozzles on ball mounts. On the wall was a similar engraved plate similar to the one in the shower with basic instructions. Stand on the foot plate, close his eyes, and plug his ears with his fingers.

Taking breath, Alexander followed the instructions. He heard the blowers winding up and the cold air started to blow over his body, causing him to shiver and his skin to goose-bump in the streams of air. After about a minute, the air began to warm up, and the nozzles started to move in circles. They were blowing hard enough to dimple his skin. Soon, everything was blowing in the warm air streams. After just a few more minutes, the nozzles stopped, and Alexander opened his eyes. His hair was slightly damp, but everything else was nice and dry.

He stepped out of the booth and, stretching and popping a few joints to limber up, walked across the room to a sealed door in the opposite wall, with "Exam Room" stenciled in bold above the door. The door had a simple single button to indicate that he was ready to enter. Pressing it, he waited a few moments. There was a brief delay as a system or person somewhere opened the sealed sliding door with a popping sound, with the typical soft whoosh of the door sliding open. The now open doorway that he stepped into, but did not fully cross the threshold of, let him get a glimpse of a sight on the other side of the door he swore he had seen countless times.

As Alexander stepped into the medical examination room, it was decorated in the typical plain style of medical examination rooms everywhere. The small room was off-white, with a cool, grey-painted concrete floor, functional furniture, equipment cabinets, and stools in a soft, strange mint color. On a swiveling arm was an array of diagnostic instruments and other tools, including ones for taking blood samples. The business end of the tools was draped with a bit of blue absorbent paper towel-like material.

The overhead light was mounted on an arm, and the end of the arm was a ring light with a hole through the center, allowing anyone using it to examine what was beneath to look down almost directly. Any metal surface that was stainless steel had a polished sheen bright enough to reflect lasers. The room smelled of ozone and antiseptics. Alexander lingered in the doorway, looking around the room.

While he was inspecting the room, the door on the opposite side swooshed open, and three people, all wearing badges of the Federation's Medical and Immigration Authority printed on their chests, and wearing full-body concealing biohazard suits, calmly walked in. The full body suits were standard medical practice to ensure that no one conducting basic examinations could be unintentionally infected with foreign diseases.

The bulk of their suits, along with the obscuring face mask underneath and the tinted visor, made it impossible to discern much of their body features, except for a vague shape. Alexander was almost sure that this amorphous form was intended to intimidate and ensure cooperation from possibly restive patients.

He quickly examined the badges printed on the exteriors of their respective suits. From what he could see, they appeared to be a physician and two assistants. The assistants would administer any necessary medications and inoculations, and the physician would conduct the preliminary examination before determining Alexander's medical fate.

Before Alexander could stand there and stare too much longer, the physician motioned him silently in with a hand wave. Without a word, Alexander entered the room, his feet stepping onto the far cooler floor of the exam room, a mild shock after the heated floors of the cryo-thaw room. Moving quickly, he stepped over to the examination table and sat on its edge, getting his bare feet off the cold floor.

Alexander sat with relative patience while the physician and their assistants began to poke and prod him. The silence of the whole procedure was eerie, and Alexander began to wonder if these were some bots. He thought the hand motions were too clean and natural for that, but their collective silence and the way they directed him with hand gestures made him wonder.

The physician was the first to break the odd silence. "Helldiver, as part of this examination, I need you to tell me to the best of your ability how you arrived at this facility." The voice from under the face mask was filtered through an electronic distortion device. It was understandable, but any distinct vocal tones or sounds were scrambled ot the point it could have been anyone under the suit. Alexander racked his brain for a moment and began recalling how he had wound up in this medical facility being examined and processed through planetary immigration. He began speaking with as few pauses as possible. His mind felt sluggish at first, but as he went through his story, it cleared, and his mental agility returned.

He told them about being handed his orders by someone at Helldivers Headquarters on Super Earth after his public trial, how it had been a swift and vicious public affair, with the SEAF and Ministry of Truth having combed through all the evidence. It collected his on-mission testimony before he had even landed and been thawed from the cryosleep. He wasn't sure, but he swore the body language of the three seemed to perk up a bit as he told his story. Possible interest in what brought him here? He wasn't sure.

He thought to himself about the parts that no one talked about. Like how all the exciting parts had been televised, and the Ministry of Prosperity had sold the TV rights to the highest bidder. Any reaction from the public gallery had been recorded and canned for later use.

Alexander was just another in a long line of judicial entertainment and propaganda works packaged as a commodity for public consumption. He wouldn't see a single centi-cred of it. Soon, it would be forgotten and filed away as a rerun filler episode or fragments turned into opportunistic propaganda. The images, sounds, and videos were chopped, spliced, morphed, and altered to suit the needs of whoever used them. He kept this line of thought to himself; no need to possibly create more trouble for himself despite his ever-growing cynical view of the Federation.

Alexander continued to describe the four hours of testimony, marked by back-and-forth arguments between politicians, lawyers, and other entities he was not privy to. Still, he could hear their names and titles being squelched out as he listened through a small speaker. He was listening from a room set aside for defendants to wait in, and how his part in the trial had then reduced his presence to a mere thirty minutes of answering some very curt questions. The prosecutor didn't seem too interested in detailed cross-examination.

He further explained how he was then ushered into a side chamber and through a door into another room when he was dismissed from the stand. This room vaguely resembled an interrogation room and holding cell combined into a single functional facility. Its spare furnishings consisted of stainless steel furniture, including a table and some chairs bolted to the floor. He sat in silence in the harsh glow of a bright white LED light, with a single camera in the high corner of the room watching him, its red indicator light blinking steadily in the only patch of darkness in the high corner.

He waited another ten minutes before a military adjutant entered the room with a stack of flimsies in a manila folder, handed him his new orders, and left. To Alexander, those ten minutes had felt like an eternity as strangers decided his fate.

A distinct tone of personal relief crept into his voice when he explained that when he had looked at the single loose sheet on top. It was a single flimsy that said only one thing: Not Guilty, proceed to the new duty station. It had a timestamp for his off-Earth departure at the nearest cryopod facility and his expected arrival date. Here he stood right at the appointed day, awaiting what came next.

He had opened the door and been met by that same adjutant who escorted him out of the building and to a waiting auto-cab. The orderly punched in the destination code and authorization for payment, and then sent him to the cryopod immigration facility for off-Earth transport.

He continued explaining that from there, he was processed for immigration, as his new duty station might become his home for a long time. After being processed, a technician explained that, to save costs, his pod would take over a month to arrive at its destination. The Ministry of Expansion would handle his pod's transfer like standard physical cargo, passing it from one courier ship to another. He was going to be treated like a cargo transfer item.

Alexander had been led to a cryopod chamber and loaded into a standard pod for long-distance and long-term transport. Shortly after the lid on the pod closed, the swirling gases of the cryoprocess-filled chamber closed in, and his consciousness faded out.

He described the basics of what likely happened after his suspension in the cryopod. A month later, the loading crew moved his pod off the ship onto a transfer shuttle hauling cargo from the courier. From there, Alexander's pod was ferried to the surface of his new duty station.

Just like other pieces of cargo on the transfer shuttle, the dockhands unloaded and shipped the pod to its designated destination. In the case of his pod, that destination was the Immigration Facilities Cryo-Thaw facility. He finished off with a gesture of hands that indicated Here I am now.

The physician merely nodded, and the assistants gently pushed his arms down so they could administer some fresh inoculations using a device similar to the stim shots used in modern battlefield medicine. They also injected him with a weak stim shot to help alleviate any tissue damage or inflammation left over from the cryogenic processes.

The physician spoke again. "You are in good health and ready for your responsibilities, Helldiver. After we leave, please dress in your temporary scrubs, exit the room, gather your effects, and follow the arrows down the halls. When you reach the corridor with the rooms, look for room 21B. That will be your quarters during quarantine."

The inoculations and stim shot were done, instructions delivered, and the paperwork signed. The physician and their assistants, almost as one, quickly walked to the exit. As soon as the door had shut behind them, Alexander began dressing again. Sitting on an unused stool was a simple dark red hospital scrub set. Alexander opened the packaging and pulled out a top, pants, and a set of slip-on shoes with a cheap anti-slip tread.

Alexander took his time carefully dressing in the cheap, thin cloth scrubs. He knew he wouldn't be wearing them long. It was better than having to walk the halls naked. The thin, opaque, and rough paper-like fabric rustled against his skin. He found he was still slightly sensitive to the touch of certain textures and hated every second of it. This side effect would likely wear off in a few hours. Once he reached his quarantine quarters, he would be able to shed these temporary garments and dress in the sensor-laden clothes he would wear for the next few days.

Finally dressed, he strode through the door out of the small medical examination cell. As he stepped out of the comparatively dimly lit medical examination cell, the bright light coming in through the windows in the long, tube-like transfer hall briefly blinded Alexander with dazzling sunlight filtering through windows from outside. Alexander stood there, dazzled for a moment, astonished by the bright light. As his eyesight recovered, the swatches of bright white patches in his vision faded to normal sight. His eyes adjusted, and he began to look around the hall.

In the hall by the door were his few personal effects, left waiting there for him while he was being examined. A bag with carrying handles, containing extra uniforms, personal effects, and basic toiletries, sat on top of sealed plastic bags of the dark grey diagnostic clothes. Whatever effects he had left on the SES Warrior of Iron would stay with the Super Destroyer. Wherever he went, that particular vessel would follow. Though he knew it was not uncommon for the ships to be tasked by high command onto support missions where needed.

Alexander sighed to himself. "I certainly hope that I get to return to the ship," Alexander said. He was thinking that the crew had become a small extended family and the ship a home of metal, glass, and technology, carrying them through the ether of outer space. He never thought such a small space would feel like home.

Deciding he had dawdled long enough, Alexander reached down and picked up the bags after putting everything inside, including his packet of paperwork. He looked around once more, his thoughts on his surroundings. He had lost track of how many different worlds he had set foot on since this war kicked off. The lack of incoming weapons fire or rushing exoskeleton-covered threats was a nice difference.

His eyes noted the long hallway with some windows set into the walls on opposite sides of each other. The only thing standing out from the off-white walls and ceiling, with the grey flooring, was the painted lines in yellow leading from his room and the doors of several others, marked with arrowheads to indicate direction. Next, he did what all new arrivals instinctively did and wandered over to the windows.

The view from one window was of several buildings built into the shadows of cliffs; the buildings' unique, rounded faces and surfaces were suited to the windy area. The buildings had a polished look, with smooth, rounded surfaces that gleamed faintly against the dun-colored building exteriors. This would be a settlement that had naturally grown around the landing port. Any point of arrival always bustled with traffic and trade. Alexander stared openly at the buildings and streets. In the far distance, he glimpsed a tall glittering tower and what looked like the crowded skyline of another city.

It was difficult to tell whether the local buildings' appearance was a result of purposeful construction or had been polished by the sandstorms that haunted the region. The buildings were beautiful in the bright light, like finely polished stones from a silty stream bed. He could see carefully paved streets with signposts with vertically oriented displays. They would weather windstorms far better than the typical horizontal broad displays favored elsewhere.

Alexander stood a few more long moments, reaching a hand out to touch the glass carefully; he felt the faint heat ebbing through the glass. His curiosity satisfied for the time being, he turned to look out the other window on the opposite wall of the transit tube. As he approached the other window, he was almost startled by the juxtaposition of the views.

The other window looked out on a hot desert scene on which the local suns glared down more directly out of the lee of the cliffs. The landing facility also served as an environmental buffer, likely doubling as a windbreak against the harsh desert winds. Alexander gazed out at the beautiful and haunting desert view. The drifting, dusty sand seemed to froth like rapids against the rugged rocks outside the port. The high heat and bright sunlight of the day made it glow with ethereal luminescence. The light glinted off minuscule flecks of silicates and quartz, mixed in with the iron, granite, and other fine particulates. The ebb and flow of reddish brown sands dancing and surging was mesmerizing.

Still enchanted by the view, Alexander raised his hand to touch the glass on this side. Even though the transfer tube from medical to the temporary quarantine quarters was conditioned, he could feel the palpable heat on the glass when he touched it with the palm of his hand. It wasn't hot enough to burn, but it was hot enough to feel through the thick, insulated glass. He could imagine the fierce, hot winds swirling around his feet, heated by the nuclear infernos of the twin suns.

After what seemed a small eternity, the magic that had entranced him had passed, and he realized he had been staring out the window. With a wry grin, his mind lurched into the direction of wry humor. A refuge in audacity, while his mind neatly and cleanly harbored the new, enchanting memory deep in his mind. While it wasn't the mist-shrouded highland forests of home with the red lichen-coated rocks, it was still a beautiful world with the stark differences just a hand's breath from each other. The technology and ambition of humanity are barely holding one side of the world back enough to create the difference in a landing port city and the harsh desert opposite it.

He couldn't help himself, and he spoke the thought aloud. "At least it's a dry heat." His words echoed the thoughts in himself, and for the first time in a while, he smiled before he started laughing. The last of the chuckle settled down as he hummed an old Earth marching song as he strolled through sliding doors and towards the quarters he would live in for three days. It wouldn't be so bad; at least there weren't any bots here.

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Quarters and Letters

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Alexander had started down the hall following the painted yellow lines. They led on and were joined by a few other lines from a few different side halls, all heading to the same long hall. The walls of this hall had been decorated with letter and number designations by the Immigration Facility staff. He only saw a few people in the distance walking steadily or entering through doors on the left side of the hall, which he was facing.

It was a short walk to the cramped temporary quarters that would house him for three days, all part of long-term safety protocols on all non-terraformed worlds and frontier planets. The tourists, traders, and visitors would have far nicer quarters than he did on the Rico Orbital Passenger Station, staying in relatively comfortable visitor suites. For the truly wealthy, they were vacation suites, almost more hotel rooms than temporary quarantine rooms. Then again, he was in the military, and they kept everything to a minimum, especially in terms of space and comfort, which is why he was not all that surprised when he saw his quarters.

It was about what he expected as Alexander waved his universal ID card at a reader by the quarter's doors. He had fished the card out of the packet he had dropped into the bag he had carried with him. The doors swished open, and he leaned his head into his temporary quarters. It looked like they had just installed an on-duty Helldiver's quarters from a Super Destroyer into the hall.

The cramped space was approximately 2.5 meters by 3 meters. The space was dominated by a work desk, a clothing cabinet that was inset into the wall, and a personal effects cabinet by the bunk with a reading light. The bunk was just big enough for him to fit into the space and was also set into the wall. On the opposite wall, just past the bunk, was a sealed door with a display showing the time remaining for quarantine, which blinked until the door behind him sealed and the timer started counting down. Now ensconced in the room for the duration, Alexander looked around the room more thoroughly.

The room's floor was a light grey painted concrete floor, and the walls and ceiling were painted metal paneling. The lights were inset daylight simulation lights behind thick plastic barriers set into the wall at head height on either side of the room and in the ceiling. He walked in and began setting up. His quick look around completed, he walked in from the space by the now closed door and put the bag he had brought within on the small stand by the inset bunk bed. In the corner was a combination shower/dryer. All the water would be monitored by automated systems and then sterilized. Next to the shower, with almost no space, was a single toilet with a bidet and a single roll of bathroom tissue right next to it. Everything that left this room, except the combustible trash, would be processed and examined before disposal.

Alexander decided he would stuff the garment bags into the locker and use the remaining floor space for exercise. He would have to change out of the red papery temporary clothing. The thin paper cloth had stopped feeling so strange to his skin by the time he made it to the room, and it was already time to shed it into the room's waste collection and disposal unit.

With an eye roll for the clothing swap so soon, he reached for a packet of one-and-done disposable trousers and a long-sleeved T-shirt embedded with cheap bio-monitor sensors. There were also some boxer briefs again with sensors, no-slip socks, and cheap slippers. The socks had the sensors embedded in them. The slip-ons were cardboard, meant to be worn casually if he so wanted and thrown away at the end of the night. From the looks of the packs, there was a three-day supply. He would dispose of the complete set of clothes at the end of every day and put on the new clothes before lying down to sleep on the sheetless bed.

All the sensors would monitor everything about his condition. The contents of his sweat, body temperature, skin flakes, and other subtle body excretions. Anything that went into a toilet, sink, or disposal unit would be analyzed by automated processes for signs of infectious foreign bio-hazard before being disposed of. Even the air he exhaled would be sucked into the overhead of the bunk space by small exhaust fans in the inset bunk, and the air Alexander had exhaled would be examined. The desk would have a self-sterilizing blood sampler that would take tiny samples of blood and test them twice a day.

Alexander looked around the bare-walled room one more time before digging into the bag. Rummaging around, he extracted a sealed plastic pack of clothes. He had also found a few personal effects in the bag. A short reprint on pre-Great War conflicts, a sheaf of reports on the semi-opaque plastic flimsy copy that always found him, and a hollowed detonator casing that was his lucky charm dangled from a nylon cord thong that he would wear around his neck.

Everything except the charm would be disposed of in the room. The personal effects drawer would thoroughly cleanse the charm before he left. The book had been one offered on a list he had chosen from General Brasch's Reading List for developing Helldiver competency and leadership, well before his trial, and it was due to be read and a short report written. The only truly personal item was his good luck charm.

Alexander maneuvered around in the small, cramped quarters, placing the plastic pack with the clothes on top of a stack of flimsy copies on the desk's surface, and setting the book on the desk by the flimsies. Glimpsing into the bag, he took out this charm and rolled the hollow cylinder between his fingers before dropping it into the personal effects drawer.

Shucking off the temporary paper clothe wearables, he dumped them into a pop-up disposal cylinder that rose out of the ground by the desk, rising from the floor at a button's push on the top of the desk.. The unit hummed as it shredded the clothes and began to bathe them in enzymes for examination and disposal. He spied another cylinder outline on the hard-floored room on the opposite side. That one was marked with the symbol for food waste. His ration trash would go into that container and would likely just be incinerated.

Sighing to himself, he grabbed up the bag of biomonitoring clothes he would wear for the next few days. After opening the stubborn plastic vacuum-sealed pack, which maddeningly contained further individually packaged clothing items, Alexander quickly dressed in the grey cloth sensor-studded clothes. The sensors were flexible plastic discs located throughout the clothes, like the cheap plastic prints on certain clothing items. Everything was snug but comfortable enough. The clothing had to be close-fitting, sufficient to ensure that enough sensors were in contact with his body. He put on everything except for the cheap slip-on footwear. He would toss that into the trash at the first opportunity.

Now dressed in his bio-monitored clothing, Alexander started to settle in. He would have to get to work reading and, ultimately, writing new reports and submitting them. Especially now that the trial was over and his technical exile was being put into effect. He was required to write a personal account for the new Commander and a list of expended assets and personnel losses to justify it. Also, other shorter reports and forms would go back to the various ministries. He hated this paperwork.

If the new Commander accepted the report, he would be officially transferred to his new unit on this world. If it were to be rejected, Alexander would be put into a new freeze tube and shipped off to what amounted to a suicide mission team. Part of the reason he even had this chance was that his actions had been seen as technically necessary, if politically embarrassing for specific individuals in power. It had been called a barbaric act of a hero carrying out his duty.

He knew he had some work ahead of him, deciding all the old reports and his mandatory development reading could wait; he moved the work to a small surface on the right-hand side of the desk. Having cleared the surface, Alexander sat at the desk and switched on the computer mode for the desk. The desk surface hummed with power, lighting up with a logo for an operating system loading screen. The software booted up with all the usual warnings from the Ministry of Truth, reminding him that their systems and agents would monitor his correspondence. The machine also reminded him that he would be charged for any entertainment he chose to view. He quickly accessed the program symbol for the electronic messenger service and logged in. A small mountain of messages had filled his inbox. From a few comments from Helldivers, several from members of his old SEAF unit, and some from family.

He spent the next few hours reading news articles, replying to mostly friendly and concerned letters and emails, as well as comments from his family about his public trial. They were relieved he had not faced any harsh judgment, but were sad to see him shipped out to a new world. It would be some time before he would see them or his homeworld again.

The messages from his friends in the SEAF units were surprisingly supportive. The SEAF officer he had tangled with, who had landed him in this mess, had developed a very nasty reputation that went well beyond his postings and followed him like the stench of rotting meat. A few recommended that he be careful on the new world, as it had its reputation, but they assured him he would be okay. Letters from the fellow Helldivers were full of support. They backed their own, especially when it came to dealing with the messes left behind by traitors. Their unadulterated support for him was heartening. There was one strange message that had no listed sender. He read, and it only said. "I haven't forgotten you, trust Rod. -B". He pondered for a moment, then shook his head. He had a good idea who that message had come from. This post could be fascinating indeed.

There were a couple of notices that some would no longer talk to him, which he found both frustrating and sad. It hadn't been fair that in doing his duty, he had upset some unseen political entity. He didn't fail to notice that those breaking contact all hailed from the regions of influence of the said political contact. He shook his head and deleted those messages. If they didn't want to see the truth and wanted to lick the boots of the master of that scum bag he had executed, he didn't care for them anymore.

He fired off a few replies and read the articles linked to him. Soon, he was done. He stood up and stretched, doing some light exercise to help alleviate the post-freeze stiffness that never quite entirely left you for a few days. He knew those couple of hours of reading were the easy ones.

Alexander sat down, heavily, laid his hands on the built-in mechanical keyboard, and began writing out his version of the events in a report for his new Commander to review. He was struggling with how much to tell them. He decided it was best to tell the whole story. At first, he struggled with it; the still-vivid nightmares of his time on the world of Malevelon Creek still followed him. The world, known to many now as "The Creek," would haunt him. He had left it temporarily, but somehow he knew he was not done with that hellhole and would be returning to the steaming jungles to fight the vicious Autamatons once more.

Taking a deep breath, he plunged on with the report. Slowly at first, and as he told his story, he felt it becoming easier to get the words out. He was soon talking to himself as he wrote. Line after line, his memory flashed back to that particular period of hellish war.

---------- Incident 22 ----------

Alexander's current situation had been caused by the fact that he had executed a corrupt SEAF officer. Not just executed him, but by protocols in place by military law and the Ministry of Truth, transmitted the active investigation to the authorities in orbit around Malevelon Creek. Again, that was all standard protocol, but the political reality was that some influential people were ultimately embarrassed by what was revealed.

The crimes committed in the heart of war on "The Creek" were numerous and unforgivable. He had been bound by both honor and duty to act. It had helped that a fellow diver from the world, part of a reconnaissance and intelligence team from an unnamed Helldiver special forces group, had helped him. All of that led to the execution by thermonuclear device of a single corrupt officer.

However, had it been somebody with far fewer political connections back on Super Earth, there would have been no issues. The cowardly commanding officer of the local SEAF command had leverage, political ties, and dirty money through those connections. When Alexander and the Special Forces Diver, Banshee, infiltrated his bunker, killing his hired and corrupt guard along the way, they had kicked the metaphorical beehive.

A point that was emphasized by a nuclear detonation at the heart of the command center. Alexander had tied the corrupt Colonel to a chair. In the Colonel's lap, he had used demolition tape to stick the 36-kilogram physics package from a SEAF long-range nuclear artillery shell to his lap. The outpost, instead of directing defenses for the local SEAF troops, had been helping coordinate several snatch teams raiding bunkers just ahead of the rescue teams.

The transmissions to those teams are what led Banshee to the Colonel's trail after he had tried to cover his tracks with spoofed calls for fire to a long-range artillery battery. While Banshee was a skilled field operative and good with electronic intelligence gathering of all varieties, they were not invulnerable. The Colonel had his own hired electronic intel expert who had found the barest hint that they were being monitored. While Banshee had been gathering evidence quietly, the enemy operative had been zeroing in on them and feeding coordinates and false fire mission requests to local artillery batteries.

By the time they had penetrated the command center, the corrupt officer, Colonel Henry Yarrow Marron, had scrambled the controls and was attempting to flee to a landing pad at the back of the bunker, which Banshee had mined with remotely detonated explosives. They hadn't wanted any last-minute reinforcements to make a surprise landing. They couldn't break the lock or access the communications system. The latter was very worrying, as the bunker was transmitting classified, encrypted information to an unknown source. This third-party satellite had self-destructed when an orbiting Destroyer attempted an intercept for capture.

Banshee's role in the mess that would become his life had been pivotal. He would have died without them on that Gods forsaken world. They had even helped gather the mountain of evidence that prevented him from standing in front of a firing squad. They had proven to be adept intelligence-gathering specialists with sophisticated hacking tools at their disposal.

After they had breached the bunker, Banshee soon spliced into the command bunkers' systems and dug up mountains of evidence. Including the fact that the bunker's self-destruct nuclear safeguard device had been removed by Marron's agents about a month back, with great secrecy, and sold off to Marron's black market connections.

Once they had rapidly dispatched the handful of hired goons Marron had on hand for his dirty work, they had quickly subdued the corrupt Colonel, securing him to the command bunker's chair. While Banshee had been hacking into the bunker systems, Alexander had pressed the muzzle of his P-19 Machine Pistol to the guts of the cowering Colonel and flicked the selector to full auto. It would be so easy to empty the mag into his guts and watch him die slowly.

As his vision began to red-out on the edges and his finger slowly tensed on the trigger, Banshee had laid a firm but calm hand on his shoulder and transmitted helmet to helmet. "You are better than that. If you kill him, do it right. I know he deserves worse, but we can do better than this." Alexander had looked briefly at Banshee and nodded.

Their distorted vox-box electronic voice had drawn a single shuddering, angry breath from him as he safed his sidearm. The sweating, cowering Colonel laughed nervously just before Banshee had stepped forward with a hard backhanded slap that had split the man's lips.

"Oh, you will die screaming for your treason. You are not going to leave this bunker alive," said Banshee. Their voice had a cold, menacing bite, with that genderless, neutral electronic tone adding a menacing buzz to the words. This was in contrast with the still-hot muzzle of the Counter Sniper rifle pressed against his throat, the sweat on the man's neck sizzling as Banshee branded him with the hot metal of the muzzle. When Banshee moved the muzzle aside, the Colonel had stopped squirming. Both Alexander and Banshee made a note of the new foul odor centered on Colonel. A glance at his trousers revealed he had soiled himself in fear.

The treason that Marron had been committing couldn't go unpunished. This very reason married neatly with Alexander's need for personal justice and revenge in a bombastic manner. They had further secured the Commander to the command chair using rolls of demolition tape meant to hold heavy explosive charges in place on almost any surface. Alexander "Tuefel Hunden" would soon bring a small piece of hell to the Colonel very directly after he had dropped the heavy physics package on the man's lap, eliciting groans of pain through the tape gag they had slapped over his mouth to silence his threats, attempts at bribery, and whining plees for mercy he had never granted any others. The heavy nuclear warhead, called a physics package, had been scavenged from a nuclear artillery shell for a long-range artillery battery. Once the battery officer had heard what happened, he provided codes and tools for them to separate the physics package. About an hour and a half later, the good Colonel had a lap full of nuclear demolitions sitting there for all to see.

Alexander had bypassed the warhead's safety and fuzing system with a demolition kit and rigged up a timer and a backup proximity trigger that would arm after he sent a signal from as far as they could get. The SEAF Heavy Field Artillery units used the shell in a rare field artillery piece that was larger than most of the SEAF gun sites. It was meant to hurl the nuclear shell tens of kilometers. It was heavy and powerful. They had set the timer so that the local bot incursion would be around the bunker just as it went off, hopefully blowing a hole in their lines.

Thankfully, they didn't have to evacuate the bunker of any SEAF personnel. That would simplify things. However, that was also the bad news. Alexander and Banshee soon discovered that the reason the bunker was empty of loyal SEAF personnel was that they were out behind the facility. They had found the entire staff and their guards slumped against a wall in a bloody, still-smoldering heap. Marron's private goons had rounded them all up, lined them up on the wall, and then shot them all to death. The entire loyal SEAF staff had been slaughtered with modified bot weapons to help cover the perpetrators' tracks. Alexander and Banshee's combat armor cams captured everything they had found and the aftermath of their mutual rage. Their voice recorders were noting everything they had seen, with only their helmet-to-helmet encrypted comms chattering in the eerie silence of the jungle around the bunker as they worked their way in.

The killing of loyal SEAF assets, the murder and kidnapping of Citizens, sabotage of ongoing military operations, the murder of SEAF military units and Helldivers, and lastly, the transmission of classified military information to an unknown third party. All of this came to light from a steady stream of information from Banshee's intruder programs, which they had uploaded via the comm array and streamed to orbit. The Colonel was going to die. The very brief discoveries they were making were sufficient for a mutual consensus in a helmet-to-helmet communication channel to ensure his death.

They had stopped everything except the transmission. The hardened communications systems could not be easily reached, as they were embedded in reinforced concrete that required special tools to gain access to. They were rapidly running out of time. The sabotage had allowed a shockingly large enemy strike force to begin overrunning the local outposts and would soon be on top of them.

They had to stop the transmission and deny the enemy the command bunker. They would have used the self-destruct, but it was no longer available. Luckily, Alexander had solved that in theory already with the physics package of the shell. He had intended it to breach the bunkers' hardened blast doors, instead of the standard demolition device that would have had to suffice.

Banshee had told him to wait while they went to get something. They were gone for long minutes while Alexander, now in his "Tuefel Hunden" name sake mindset, waited, a finger on the trigger of his SMG-37 Defender aimed out in the jungle. They had at most half an hour before the bots would reach the bunker. He hoped Banshee would be back before too long; otherwise, it would be time for him to flee on foot by himself to their dust-off point.

Before Alexander's tense nerves and fatigue could drive him crazier, Banshee signaled that they had returned and to come back into the bunker. He had climbed down from an elevated guard tower and walked into the breached command center. To his complete shock, a partially disassembled Hellbomb had been dragged into the command center and set at the feet of the Colonel.

Alexander looked amazed. "I don't want to know where you got that, but why did you get it?" He was confused as the liberated physics package from the artillery shell would level the entire outpost, leaving a briefly irradiated and burning crater.

The implied impish grin in Banshee's voice was enough. "It looked like you were having fun setting up yours, and I wanted a piece of the action. Now with this, we can be sure we take him and his new bot friends out."

Alexander had laughed out loud. The point was valid, and he could not deny Banshee their part in meting out punishment to the scum in the room. It was good to have a friend in these dark times. Nodding to Banshee, he said, "I will meet you outside when you are done. We can make for our extraction and leave the scum to greet the bots."

With that, he had left to wait outside. A few short minutes later, they were heading for the extraction point. It hadn't taken them long to reach it. While waiting for the ship to land, the Jungle of Malevelon Creek had glowed with hellish, actinic light, as their surprise for the advancing bots had delivered a double blow, destroying their enemies and punishing the wicked.

The warning that a Pelican was heading their way was broadcast by the flight control systems of the flight control network system to their helmets. Banshee stared hard at him through the helmet. "While we were gathering evidence, the Ministry of Truth Intel Cruiser, SES Hammer of Justice, detected our helms transmitting evidence of treason and locked into our broadcast signals. I am sorry to say this is not over for you. As far as the military politicians know, I didn't come here. The weight of this mess will fall on your shoulders. But because you helped avenge my friends and comrades, I will do what I can to make sure you never pay the full price. Know that you did the right thing." Banshee had given his upper arm a firm grip and walked away before he could ask what they meant.

Before he could press the question, the popping sound of a Pelican dropping out of supersonic transatmospheric flight reached them. Soon, the roar of the engines firing hard in a retro burn to land on the pad drowned out all else except the call of Pelican landing, all Divers aboard, and the dust off in thirty seconds warning.

They were quickly aboard but not alone. A pair of Ministry of Truth troopers were on board and handed him orders stating that he would be accompanying them. He said nothing, only nodded and leaned against the hull of the Pelican as it lifted off. The roar of the engines and the thrum of transatmospheric flight were the only sounds as they lifted clear of the world. The Pelican had landed on the SES Hammer of Justice. Alexander and the Ministry Troopers had gotten off, but Banshee had stayed on as the craft spooled up to relaunch as soon as they were clear.

The last sound of that trip before he was stuffed into a crypod after being fully disarmed was the beep of a message from Banshee in his helmet. "I was never here, be silent about me, but trust me and I will help you. Should anyone need to reference me or others, they will use a sign of trust; they will use the phrase the little birds told me. Goodbye and good Luck, Hell Hound." He hadn't seen or heard from Banshee directly since.

However, several things, including how surprisingly short and effective his trial, especially his defense, had been, made Alexander think that Banshee or their contacts had kept the promise. Alexander was also sure that several anonymous messages had been from Banshee, but he had no way of knowing for sure. Still, it was a comforting thought.

Finishing his report, Alexander knew it would be wildly different from the official public report; it always was. His polygraph, which was administered through the desk in front of him, attested to his honesty, or at least he hoped it did. He hit "send," and a copy was sent to his files, one to SEAF Helldiver Command, and another to his new prospective Commander.

He sat pondering his future when his stomach rumbled, reminding him it had been a long time since he last ate. With fortuitous timing, the desk chimed, and a drawer opened, revealing several meal packs and a water bottle with supplements. All neatly individually packaged.

Not wanting to spend too much time being selective about his meals, he selected one of the pouches, along with a packet of supplements and a bottle of water, and set them out on the desk. Alexander decided to start his meal; this would be a task he did not look forward to. The meals were the same type of field rations commonly issued, not just to the SEAF units but also to civilian auxiliaries and as relief rations for displaced populations.

The gray pouches were made of a thick, almost leather-like plastic sleeve that had been pressure- and heat-sealed at both ends. Printed in bold black letters on a gray white background was a description of the meal. Flipping the bag over, you would find instructions on how to use the self-heating unit, as well as a list of menu items and other contents of the pouch.

This particular pack was dubiously labeled as "Beef Stew w/Wheat Roll and Butter Substitute". The back of the pack listed a napkin, spoon, fork, knife, wet wipes, salt and pepper packets, and an after-meal mint that also served as a mild fiber-based laxative to prevent constipation from the heavily preserved foodstuffs.

Alexander grimaced. He fished around in the desk for something to open the pouch with. Finding nothing, he simply vented his frustration for a couple of minutes to tear open the bag. He wished he had his combat utility knife, commonly used on his homeworld. Now that the bag was open, he peered into the pack. It included a spork and plastic knife, as well as salt and pepper for flavor, and activated the self-heating unit. He took the supplements with a swig of water from the bottle, swallowing the tablets down. Next, he placed the self-heater with a splash of water into an internal pouch in the bag with his smaller ration pouches inside, and crimped the edges of the bag by rolling it closed. It wasn't long before steam leaked out of the corners.

Alexander carefully picked up the meal bag, opening it slowly, keeping his face back. At the same time, a billow of steam filled the room, briefly raising the local humidity level before the climate control whisked the excess moisture away. He carefully reached into his now hot pouch, his hand getting wet from the beads of moisture on the packets inside, and pinched the sealed edges of the meal packets he had placed in the bag. Alexander pulled the hot meals from the bag and set them on the desk to cool enough to eat. He had torn open a corner of the bread bag to let some moisture into the pouch; otherwise, the notoriously dry bread would have been almost inedibly dry, and he dropped it back into the bag and rolled it shut again for a few minutes.

Alexander fished out the salt and pepper and carefully tore open the top of the "beef stew" pouch. He stirred in the pepper, mixing the salt with the butter substitute. He dropped it all into the pouch and stirred. He started to carefully spoon the hot mush into his mouth, not thinking too much about the texture or flavor, doing his best to wolf it down. The slightly soggy but edible bread went down next, followed by an entire water bottle. He sat after sucking on the high fiber mint.

He had wiped down his desk with a napkin and a wet wipe, put everything in the bag, and then placed it into a receptacle that had risen out of the floor at the touch of a button on the desktop. The lids of the receptacle irised open. He dumped the meal remains, the cardboard sandals, and other room trash into the circular bin. A second button press caused it to descend back into the floor. Alexander believed he heard a brief hiss and roar of an incinerator, followed by silence. The seal on the disposal was so good that not even a whiff of burnt plastic or fuel wafted from it.

He had left the drawer open for a bit while eating and looked over his rations for the next few days. Most of the menu was okay, but the one he was eating now was the only bad one. He was happy to see vegetarian ravioli and cheese in there. That was one of his personal favorites that he would eat last.

Having finished his meal and his work for the day, he rose. Alexander stretched from the space by the chair where he had been sitting, and his back and shoulders popped. He moved over to the bed and sat on the edge of it. The whole day had been exhausting, and cryosleep never provided real rest. His body was tired and needed to process everything that had happened to him. Soon, he was fast asleep, his steady breathing the only sound beyond the climate controls filtering the air in his quarters.

-------------- Commander Rod --------------

It had been a long, boring three days since Alexander had entered the quarters and was glad to put his back to the extremely cramped space. It was serviceable and similar in size to on-duty quarters on a Super Destroyer. However, on the Super Destroyers, on-duty Helldivers would have tasks and duties that required them to move around the ship, participate in training, and avoid being confined to the cramped quarters. Needless to say, he was happy to be leaving them.

Dressed in the standard Helldivers black jacket, grey trousers, and gold trim uniform with his Helldiver Pins on his collar, he stepped out into the hallways, his polished black boots clicking on the tile as he marched out of the now unlocked door and into the disembarkment hall.

With his garment bags over one arm, Alexander walked down the corridor. He had been met not far around a corner by a sharp-looking local SEAF Sergeant named Sergeant Harlan, wearing the Khaki, Crimson, and Gold trim of the local garrison uniforms. The man had met him not far outside the quarters and was waiting patiently, arms crossed, gazing out at the desert through insulated glass in an almost meditative state.

The SEAF Sergeant had greeted Alexander with a friendly but firm handshake. His voice was deep and projecting, ideal for issuing commands across a long distance and over battlefield noise when communications systems were on the fritz. "Pleased to meet you, sir. I must say, we are curious to see if you will be joining us. We want to hear your story." Sergeant Harlan had said.

He had glanced at Alexander, almost expecting a comment. The man was of the same height, and they walked next to each other, their boot heels clicking on the concrete composite flooring of the connecting tunnel, following a green line designated for military arrivals.

Alexander walked about a dozen steps in silence before answering. "Maybe you will get to hear my side of the story if the Commander accepts my account and releases me to tell it. Given the series of events that led me to be here, I am not personally very confident I will be afforded that opportunity." Alexander's face was a frowning, brooding display of cynicism born from the hard sting of reality.

Harlan chuckled, surprising Alexander, who turned his head to look at his companion and see him for the first time. Alexander had realized he had been so lost in his head with anxiety overthinking his position that he had not taken in the Sergeant past the perfunctory and customary handshake. To add to Alexander's woes, the three days of solitary brooding had not been good for his mental health. He honestly felt rude for ignoring the courteous Non-Commissioned Officer.

Sergeant Harlan was a tall, leanly muscular, tanned man with dark hair, sharp, angular features, and a carefully maintained short handlebar mustache. Alexander looked at his uniform for the first time in detail, taking it in at a glance as they walked. Sergeant Harlan smirked, seeming to quietly acknowledge that Helldiver walking beside him had been lost in his worries.

The Sergeant was a local variant of the Battle Dress Uniform, a privilege various local planetary units with a permanent garrison were afforded by SEAF High Command. This uniform was the duty dress uniform, more intended for duties in a non-formal but not field condition setting.

It had a long-sleeved, uniformed blouse top in a crimson color with gold accents at the cuffs and highlights of the button-up front. The op of the blouse had a button-over flap that was worn open in anything but inclement weather. The dress shirt under the blouse was a long-sleeved black button-up.

The trousers were a dark Khaki color with crimson stripes on either leg, bordered in gold. The tops of the trousers were rolled and tucked into the top of calf-high, polished black bug leather boots. The trousers are held in place by a belt of color similar to the fabric, with a canvas cloth ratchet belt. The blouse was held in place by a wide black duty belt with a subdued brass SEAF logo belt buckle.

On the duty belt was a holstered large-caliber sidearm. As the briefing had warned about aggressive wildlife, everyone was armed at all times, both with issued and personal weapons. Alexander had been shocked to learn that some of the wildlife, native, imported, and modified, were sometimes highly aggressive, and only those foolish went out unarmed. He also wore a large fighting knife on the opposite hip, the grip easily in reach of either hand.

The polite Sergeant Harlan only grinned as he noticed Alexander stop to look over the person who had met him at the immigration port, seeing him for the first time since he began escorting him down the transit tunnel, primarily when Alexander had eyed his armaments with interest. "Do not worry, my friend. I understand your concern, but you will be quite safe with me. I am skilled with local survival techniques, I'm a damn good shot, and the Dune Born trained me in the blade." Alexander had nodded at the reassurance as they continued to walk on.

Alexander, feeling he owed an apology, spoke up. "I am sorry for my rudeness. You are polite, professional, and courteous. I have forgotten my manners. I beg your pardon, my mind has been elsewhere." He said, looking sideways as they walked. Sergeant Harlan nodded with a broad, beaming smile as if this simple act of contrition pleased him greatly before speaking for himself.

"It is okay. Please understand that you have a lot on your mind. The events that led to you landing on our world were quite serious and very trying, especially after your time on Malevelon. You have not had much time to sort through things and figure out your next steps," said Sergeant Harlan. Alexander noticed the same odd accent as the voice over the intercom from the thawing room. He was growing more curious by the day about what cultures had settled the harsh desert world of Klendath II.

Alexander sighed heavily, his head hanging down a little bit. "I appreciate the courtesy, but I don't think you understand just how far down the rabbit hole they have dumped me. I made a politician back on Super Earth rather angry. The evidence from my incident painted some officials in a fairly unflattering light." Alexander grimaced at the thought. That information had only come to his attention through one of the mysterious, self-erasing anonymous messages he received periodically.

The Sergeant's eyebrows narrowed into view as his forehead creased in confusion. "I understand that part; some of that was leaked to the greater galactic web past the censors' network. However, that doesn't explain why you were allowed to walk away as it were," he said. His face turned inquisitive, his eyes bright with a mischief that seemed to hint he knew there was more to the story, and his expression was expectant.

Alexander's head perked up a bit. "You are correct. Somehow, the details of what exactly happened were brought to the attention of those unflattered politicians' rivals and a few interested parties that just wanted to bruise their egos. And shortly after, there was some nasty backroom politicking behind closed doors." Alexander said a look of brief confusion crossed his face before he continued.

Alexander gently made small nods of the head as if conceding to thoughts in the background of his mind. He was watching their path down the corridor. He could see an increasingly bright light up ahead, and the echoing boot steps of their steady progress were oddly alone.

Alexander looked slightly aside at the still smiling Sergeant Harlan, seeing his calm and patient smile waiting for more. "The judge, jury, lawyers, and even some Ministry of Truth officers were roped into this nasty back-room fight. A few politicians were quietly demoted from the lower rungs and hastily replaced." Alexander looked up at the ceiling in exasperation before continuing.

"Deciding to put their thumb in the eye of the politician heading the party gunning for me, they declared me a state witness and a temporary Ministry of Truth Enforcement Agent, stating that I had been acting as such all along. I was to be awarded a posting away from the active front for a time before my Super Destroyer transfers to local orbit, pending acceptance of the local Unit Commander." Alexander said, a note of doubt and hesitation in his voice.

Nodding his head, Sergeant Harlan seemed quite pleased, as if he had won a prize at a community fair. "Sir, if I may be so bold as to suggest, you will be fine. Please give our Commander, Rod, your full report and the unvarnished truth. I know you have not said everything, but I strongly suspect what you will have to say to the Commander will ensure you are with us for a while yet." He finished and looked forward as they approached a large sealed door that was nothing more than thick insulated glass.

Alexander stopped several feet back and gazed through the thick glass doors in astonishment. His views of the small bit of the town had hidden almost everything. The view through those doors was a startlingly busy orbital transit hub town with specks of lights flying to and from the hub, as well as a strange-looking parade of drifting lights heading out across the desert.

The Sergeant turned and waited for Alexander to step forward. As they approached the glass together in step, the doors whooshed open, sliding into their frame. A hot blast of air blasted Alexander with a gentle grit and the smell of an active Orbital transit hub.

Sergeant Harlan watched as Alexander stepped further out onto the sidewalk, letting the automatic doors close behind them. He lifted his face to the breeze, feeling the air of the new world, and took in the scent of the location.

The smell of ozone, combusted fuels, and the metallic stench of the hot landing pads and heated starship hulls formed part of a permanently stamped sensory memory that was familiar to anyone involved in star travel, even those working the ports. The scents wafting on the hot wind blowing off the storage yards were ones anyone who had traveled the galaxy as much as a Helldiver would recognize.

The distinct, sharp odor of E-710 products, the crisp scent of lumber from the forestry colonies, the heavy, metallic scents of processed ore loads, and the faint smell of polymers in everything from wrappers and containers. All of the various scents were well known to Alexander.

Other intriguing smells were drifting to Alexander's senses from the outbound storage yards. It was a milieu of spices, processed chemicals, and a wide assortment of organic odors. One odor in particular made him start and look in the direction of the port. It was a smell that anyone who had fought on the bug front would recognize even through the filters of the helmet; the tangy, pungent odor of Terminid pheromones wafting on the breeze.

As if he were reading his mind, Sergeant Harlan chuckled. "It is okay, Diver. I have seen that look on the faces of more than one veteran of the Bug Front. Yes, you are smelling Bug pheromones. We export living examples as well as their various processed product, such as their leather, meat, oils, and other goods. Before you ask, we are not a farm world. The population here is wild and truly distinct from the wild population that is rampaging across part of the galaxy." The Sergeant took a stroll down the sidewalk toward a line of vehicles guarded by SEAF troopers in body armor in the local battle dress uniform pattern.

"It will be explained in your onboarding cultural and history packet once you have had your chat with the Commander. I promise you, it will make sense. Now, please come with me, and we shall transport you to the HQ. The sooner you get this part over with, the sooner you can join your new family." The smiling Sergeant turned to the line of guarded vehicles.

They approached the vehicle, and to his surprise, Alexander realized it was a hovercraft. Realizing the low-pressure footprint would give the car excellent mobility over the soft sands of even the shifting desert, the large, powerful blowers in the back of the car could push it up all but the steepest of inclines. This particular example was painted a hue similar to that of the local desert for a paint scheme.

No blending camouflage paint, just a monolithic color all around. The bright work had been painted over a light grey color. A single SEAF trooper sat in the front, waiting patiently, and Alexander could hear the low thrum of the running engine. Approaching the ground vehicle, the vibrations in the ground suggested a relatively powerful engine.

While one of the on guard SEAF troops loaded his effects into sealed rigid containers on the side of the vehicle, Alexander quickly climbed up the simple ladder on the side of the rigid plenum chamber skirts, almost eager to have his first ride in a vehicle he had only heard of in history books and TV dramas.

Alexander had settled in the back with Sergeant Harlan taking the front seat by the driver. Soon, the deep thrum was felt far more intensely, and the craft rose several inches, a billow of dust and air gushing around the edges of the plenum chamber. The open-topped vehicle had an air flow pattern that pushed the air and dirt away.

The driver briefly turned around to look at Alexander with dark brown eyes and sun-bleached hair. "Listen, Blue Breath, put on the goggles and mask under the seat. When we get up to speed, you don't want to suck down too much dirt or you'll be yacking it up for the next few days." His partly menacing grin, with white teeth showing against a deeply tanned face, revealed itself.

Sergeant Harland cuffed the back of his head. The driver ducked his head in an apology, still grinning, and turned around. While Alexander was fitting the dust mask to his face and adjusting the goggles, Sergeant Harland turned around, wearing something similar on his face. His muffled voice came through just barely over the loud hum. "Ignore him, he is a poorly socialized Dunekin. He was raised by the wild dogs and has no manners." His smiling eyes gleamed behind the goggles. The driver could be heard muttering about offworlders and their Dustborn baby sitters.

Before anyone else could comment, the vehicle lifted slightly and began to move forward at an increasingly fast rate. The hover car shot forward down the thoroughfare, which contained only a few large vehicles with massive, fat tires, cruising at a comparatively sedate pace across a patch of open desert, heading for what appeared to be a bustling city in the distance. They were cargo vehicles laden with equipment and supplies. As they dashed ahead of the slower cars on a more sandy track, accompanied by a few other hover vehicles, they saw a long plume of dust that seemed to snake along a ribbon of stone heading in the same direction. As they caught up to it, the source of the dust plume proved a fantastic sight.

A trail of several vehicles with wide, thick treads sped along a hard patch of ground with a plow-like structure up front, clearing dust off the track. The car was several segments working in unison to propel the large vehicle. Each segment resembled sealed military train cars he had seen used on his world and others. As they approached the front, they could see that the dust was blowing out several feet ahead of the plow. Alexander stared in amazement.

The driver of the hover car briefly noticed Alexander's staring curiosity and spoke up over his shoulder. "First time seeing a Klendathu Land Train, I take it?" His shout over the ambient noise of machines and wind was friendlier than it had been earlier, reflecting Alexander's earnest amazement and curiosity. Alexander shouted back." Yes, it's incredible. How does it push the dust so far out front?" he continued to watch in fascination as the train continued at a steady high speed. Who would have thought it could move along so fast?

The driver nodded before answering. "It has a powerful jet turbine engine in the front, and the exhaust is blown through a pressurized nozzle that helps lift and move the dust. The entire process is partially automated, with a small crew on board to oversee it. It runs on a permanently maintained strip of artificial stone between several locations. This one is the Spaceport Express. It's carrying war supplies and imported goods."

Alexander smiled to himself. "Thank you for telling me, it's impressive. I hope to see more remarkable things here. I love seeing the different worlds when I am not having to fight on them." The driver nodded in a seemingly happy gesture. Alexander turned to watch the land train until a series of rising stone cliffs hid its descending track, and their path turned into a steady upward slope. The ground beneath soon gave way to similar artificial stone, and soon a wide paved road led into the city.

The scenery speeding by went from rural landscape and desert, and rapidly gave way to modern urban landscapes and roads. Their pace began to slow to local traffic speeds. In another ten minutes, they were at the foot of a tall tower with the logo of the 95th Helldiver Division emblazoned on it. The Sergeant took off his goggles, hanging them around his neck with the dust mask. Alexander followed suit. Sergeant Harlan gestured for him to follow while the driver got out, powering down the vehicle, which settled onto stands that extended from the undercarriage to hold the hover-car. He began to unload other rigid containers, as well as Alexander's effects.

"I will show you where the Commander is. He has just returned from a training exercise, which is good for us as he won't be too worried about our dusty arrival. Besides, the blower chamber will knock most of the dust off you." The SergSergeant Alexander to the front of the building and toward a brace of guards overseeing a steel door entrance. The armed men stood aside and allowed both Alexander and Sergeant Harland to swipe their universal IDs over the reader and place their hands on the biometric scanner. The bright light of the bio reader made their hands appear transparent as the system scanned the patterns of their blood vessels, bones, and tendons, matching them to ones on file from recent physicals.

The system emitted a happy chirping sound, and the guards used their keys and cards to open the door, allowing them entry. The single narrow steel door led to a larger airlock-style chamber. The metal door closed behind them with the whoomph of a sealed door closing firmly behind them, followed by the sound of the pressurization pump kicking in. Sergeant Harland put on his goggles and mask again and signaled for Alexander to do the same. Shortly after donning the protective gear, powerful gusts of wind started to blow from hidden vents in the floors, walls, and ceiling. The air blew from one side to the other, and the sound of a powerful vacuum could be heard sucking the air and loosening dirt and dust from the room. The flurry of air, of course, left the two men somewhat rumpled but otherwise mostly dust-free. The only trace was a faint patina of dust that had embedded in the fabric, the stubborn traces of heavy iron particulate, and the granites that liked to stick to military uniforms. Alexander had heard the desert of this world never really left you, and he could see why. There were rumors of other things, but you could never trust those until you went planet-side. He vaguely remembered something about wind scars and would have to remember to ask about those.

The next set of doors to open in front of them was a set of wider sealing double doors. They strode through and stood before a bank of elevators. Sergeant Harlan led him to one in particular and swiped his ID card. While they waited, he looked at Alexander, his smile fading to a serious line. "I will ride up with you and leave you at the armory door. The Commander will interview you there while he cleans his gear. Remember to tell him everything, including the thing you left out with me. You will find him far more receptive than you think, especially if the rumors of why you are with us are accurate. You can trust me and him. The little birds told me."

Alexander looked over, sharply startled at hearing the coded phrase. He had almost forgotten it after all this time. The Sergeant had a sad smile on his face, and before Alexander could say anything, the elevator door hissed softly open, and a ding indicated it had arrived. They stepped in silently. Alexander kept looking at the Sergeant in the corner of his eye the whole trip up. This entire time, an ally of sorts had been waiting here for him. Banshee had come through again.

When they arrived at the floor, several long seconds late, they stepped out and strode towards a sealed armored door with the same biometric lock that had let them into the military portion of the building. "Before I let you in to see the Commander, I want you to know you have friends and allies on this world. We take care of our own. That SEAF special forces unit was from here." Alexander's eyes went wide as he stammered. "I am sorry I wasn't able to help keep them alive. He had a deep frown on his clean-shaven face, the sorrow haunting his eyes.

Sergeant Harlan laid a gentle but firm hand on his shoulder, a sad smile on his face. Alexander knew the unit was all from one world, but none would say it was part of the standard operating procedure of the Special Forces to keep that information a tight secret. Now here he was on their home and greeted as an ally.

Alexander was visibly struggling with what to say next; his mouth opened and closed a few times before Sergeant Harlan touched his shoulder. Alexander relaxed and nodded gratefully to the Sergeant. You do not need to apologize. None of us saw that treachery coming. The mere fact that you could have just left but didn't, and instead sought justice and retribution, means that several of us, including others, can be counted as friends." Sergeant Harlan stared at him with an intense look of gratitude weighted with heartfelt honor.

"I owe you a debt of honor for both finding justice for them and avenging my brother, who was in that unit. They spoke of you in the few letters they sent home before you had to go dark. You were courteous and treated them with respect, treating them as equals. That respect means a lot to those of us from Klendathu. Again, thank you, my friend, for finding justice for our fallen." Sergeant Harlan stepped back and clasped Alexander's arm in a firm grip, a look of determination on his face, before breaking the grasp and swiping the keypad and laying his hand on the biometric reader.

Alexander's head swam with the intensity of the moment and the realization that he had found allies in abundance here. That there was still a chance for him. He had one more test to face. As the armory door swung open, he could hear the sound of an air compressor, and the steady hiss of pressurized air could be heard from inside the armory. Sergeant Harlan stood aside and let Alexander walk in.

"Good luck, my friend. I will be waiting for you in the elevator lobby when you are done." The Sergeant walked towards the elevators, and Alexander stepped into the armory.

The meter-thick door with a bank vault-like locking mechanism swung shut behind him and sealed with a hiss. He stepped further into the extensive armory. There were multiple racks of various weapons used by the Helldivers. In the back were several workbenches with a few armorers quietly working on multiple weapons. To one side were several smaller individual maintenance bays, and a loud hissing sound was coming from one of those.

The sound of a vacuum pump, the rattle of an air compressor, and the hiss of pressurized air being blown through a nozzle could be heard as Alexander instinctively walked in that direction. There was a small office with the Non-Commissioned Officer in Charge's acronym letters on a plaque, and a woman doing paperwork who briefly glanced at him, then at the booth, before looking back at her work. Seeing that as a sign he was on track, he continued towards what looked like a personal study booth with a clear door.

Standing inside was a man of average height in the local BDU uniform, tending to a set of combat armor. His dark, shoulder-length hair and a glimpse of a bearded face revealed him to be focused on his task. The man was busily blowing dust and dirt out of crevices in the armor. An in-room vacuum pump sucked up the loose plumes of dust while he alternated between blowing off the loose dust and wiping the armor down with a lightly dampened oilcloth. On a bench outside the booth nearby was a disassembled but clean BR-14 Adjudicator Battle Rifle. Cleaned and maintained to a professional degree.

Alexander stood patiently at parade rest outside the booth while the man inside worked on the armor. He let his thoughts wander as he quietly waited to be noticed. His mind turned to the tumult of events that led up to this point. Including the shocking reveal of just how many friends and allies he had found himself with on this hot, strange world.

He was so lost in his thoughts that he did not hear the compressor grow quiet or the silence of the vacuum chamber door clicking open until the man spoke. "You must be Alexander. I have been waiting for you to arrive." He gave a knowing, wry smile: "`Hurry up and wait.' Never changes. They rush you out but take their time getting you there." He took several pieces of the armor suit out and picked up the helmet from a nearby bench. Step in, we can talk while I work on my helmet.

"Yes, sir.' Alexander said, stepping into the booth without hesitation. There was just enough room for two people, the stand, and the cleaning equipment. The hum of the vacuum chamber filled the air again, and the brief rattle of the aicrompressor being turned back on filled the room with a steady aurora of background noise.

"First, I am Commander Rod. I lead the 95th Roughnecks. Before you say anything, know the little birds told me everything about your situation and what happened on Malevelon Creek. For what it's worth, I'm sorry you got caught up in that mess. Our special force unit had been working with a black ops unit to track down the human traffickers, and we had narrowed down their latest operation to that world." He handed Alexander the helmet and had him hold it so he could work the pressure nozzle over the faceplate and necklines while his other hand brushed at spaces with the oil cloth. After a few puffs of pressurized air, he took the helmet back and wiped the cleaned areas.

"I also know you hunted down the bastard who found our team and wiped them out. I am sure Sergeant Harlan already conveyed his sentiments. Know that many of us who are from here feel the same. Well, those of us who know the truth. However, before I can accept you, I want to know everything from when you met our team to when the Pelican and the enforcers took you up and put you in the Cryopod. Leave nothing out, tell me everything." Commander Rod looked at him with a flat look, waiting for his reply.

Alexander took a deep breath; he looked nervous and glanced around the chamber, past Commander Rod, to the ever-present security cameras and communications repeaters in the armory. Sensing his unease, Commander Rod nodded and offered a smile. "You're right to be cautious. We control the security system in the armory, not the Ministries, although they wouldn't know it with the bypasses we regularly feed into their systems. To add to that, we are meeting here, so the white noise would likely block out any listening devices. You passed through a faint static field that would have fried anything not hardened coming into the armory. You wouldn't have even noticed it. You can speak freely."

The Commander picked up a cloth and started wiping out the inside of the helmet. He periodically stopped to use the air pressure hose, then kicked the compressor back on, keeping the noise level up.

Alexander heaved a heavy sigh, licked his lips nervously, swallowing his nerves. He took the air pressure hose in hand and pretended to spray a few stray spots on the helm at a rate the Commander had demonstrated. In the noise of the cabinet, they cleaned the Commander's field kit piece by piece, and Alexander told him everything.

A few hours later, Alexander was walking out the front doors of the building with a smiling Sergeant Harlan, who handed him a new personal communications device. "I told you it would go well." Alexander heaved a tired sigh. Nodding in agreement. "You did, and thank you for greeting me. I owe you a bit as well. I learned some details I did not know. You may have inadvertently saved my life. I have made a mutual enemy with an influential person. Your meeting with me at the immigration center saved me from being disappeared.

Sergeant Harlan nodded. "It was my pleasure. Enough, let's get you to the barracks at the fire base and get you some chow. Your training begins soon. In a few days, we will begin turning you into one of us. Welcome to the 95th, welcome to the Roughnecks, welcome home." Alexander couldn't help but smile. He may have been born on a cool world in the sector in the opposite direction of the galaxy, but he felt that at least he could find a new home here among the stars.

With that, Alexander was led to another waiting hover car; he and his effects were loaded onboard, and they were whisked away down a different highway. The lights of the megacity were speeding by. Alexander's head swam with the knowledge that he had at least found a place of refuge from the political machinations of Super Earth. His gaze turned skyward as they left the city limits towards the air lift that would take him to the nearest fire base for training.

The growing belt of alien constellations and streaks of stars reminded him there was a war in the galaxy, and soon enough, he would be back. He knew he would be going back to "The Creek". He also knew other threats abounded. Rumors of strange sightings, shifts on the Bug Front, and sightings of new bot enemies circulated through the rumor mill. The galaxy was on fire, and only time would tell if they burned or weathered the firestorm. Until then, he would rest here and train. When Alexander was done, he would go back to the stars.

[niyarest]

need you to see this banger combination of signs i saw today

[lindwurm-prince]

[the-old-homosexual-deactivated2]

Can we talk about how in zombie shows/movies/books they always find a veterinarian and not a surgeon? Are veterinarians deemed more likely to survive the apocalypse?

[drferox]

Yup.

One of our professional skills is ‘not being bitten by patients’

We actually have a good broad knowledge base for both surgical, medical, and GP things

We’re used to improvising equipment because a lot of stuff is just not made for animals

Meat safety is part of our training

Our cars are often full of equipment, especially in mixed practice

We probably weren’t in the human hospital at the initial outbreak

[antique-scarecrow]

This post is deemed culturally, historically, or aesthetically significant as certified by the National Shitpost Registry.

[drferox]

But I was being serious 🥲

[wh40kpowerpoints]

Enjoy some more darktide voicelines. I also upgraded my computer so now the game doesn't lag for a second when I take a screenshot now.And this time I included my loose cannon vet.

[p00p-sc00p-deactivated20241106]

[bitterkarella]

Midnight Pals: Muppet LOTR

[at unicorn fuck club] Jim Henson: hi ho jim the Henson here Henson: tonight I've got a fantasy story i think you'll really enjoy Henson: it's about a planet inhabited entirely by puppets Henson: [flailing arms wildly] yaaaaaaaaaaaaay!!!

Henson: on a distant planet, the dark crystal cracks Henson: causing the urskeks to transmogrify into the skeksis and the mystics Henson: only at the great conjunction can the gelfling jen heal the crystal and unite the JRR Tolkien: hey tell the story with David bowie GRR Martin: yeah we want David bowie

Henson: but guys the dark crystal is a serious fantasy experiment Henson: creating an entire world only through the magic of puppetry and Tolkien: [sitting in an opera box with GRR Martin] Boo! We want David bowie! Martin: And Jennifer Connelly!

Tolkien: what's your next number? something terrible, i'm sure! Martin: oh ho ho ho! Henson: i was thinking we would do muppet lord of the rings

Henson: Robin could be Frodo, fozzie could be sam Tolkien: what??? no! no way! Tolkien: he's a rod puppet! Tolkien: how are people going to see their big hairy stinky feet?! Tolkien: you need full body puppets for this role! Henson: well i guess we could use sweetums Henson: or maybe big bird Tolkien: fine! just put some fuzz on those feet!

Henson: and Clifford would be Gandalf Henson: Kermit as Aragorn Henson: Sam as Elrond Henson: gonzo as tom Bombadil Henson: who would also narrate, of course Tolkien: oh of course

Henson: and that means Camille would be goldberry Tolkien: what? the most powerful being in all of middle earth played by a chicken?? Tolkien: no wait this kind of works

Henson: Miss Piggy as Arwen Tolkien: that's all well and good but LOTR has TWO girls in it Tolkien: who would play Galadriel? Henson: well we actually do have two girl muppets Henson: so i guess it would have to be Janice Tolkien: oh ok i guess this works out pretty well then

Tolkien: this muppet LOTR idea is wonderful! Martin: terrific! Tolkien: well, it's pretty good! Martin: yeah it isn't bad Tolkien: actually there are some bad parts Martin: lots of bad parts Tolkien: it stinks! Martin: terrible! Tolkien: boo!

[middle-earth-mythopoeia]

Uh, guys? Don't confuse your crappy televised fanfic for the story that Tolkien actually wrote.

Galadriel was never "under Sauron's thrall." That's something ROP made up. In Unfinished Tales, she was the only one in Eregion who suspected that Annatar was lying about being an emissary of the Valar. Celebrimbor was deceived by him. She was not. She was certainly not "under his thrall." No, not even because she had Nenya.

Yes, when Frodo offered her the One Ring, she was tempted. It could have given her the power to prevent the fading of Lothlórien. But when she makes this speech in the book, and in the Peter Jackson movies, it's her own thought, she's not repeating something that Sauron said to her once:

“You will give me the Ring freely! In place of the Dark Lord you will set up a Queen. And I shall not be dark, but beautiful and terrible as the Morning and the Night! Fair as the Sea and the Sun and the Snow upon the Mountain! Dreadful as the Storm and the Lightning! Stronger than the foundations of the earth. All shall love me and despair!”

These are Galadriel's words. Her words. Not Sauron's. And she was tempted by the One Ring because she could have been a more powerful queen, not Sauron's queen. Like, you guys really took one of the most powerful and complex female characters in Tolkien's works and you made her story all about a man and his power over her and his manipulation of her. Fuck off.

And stop tagging ROP as Lord of the Rings.

[shuunnico]

When taken in a vacuum, Rings of Power is a terrible show. It's very poorly written, characters act nonsensically, the timeline is often inconsistent, the production is surprisingly low for a show with this much money in it and any potential the show COULD have is squandered.

That's without factoring in anything to do with Tolkien.

When you do consider that it's an adaption of Tolkien, it becomes infinitely worse because of the things mentioned above. It twists canon, invents things that completely go against the original intent and makes the world/characters infinitely more shallow and hollow.

And the fact that, somehow, people are confusing anything in RoP for what Tolkien created is the biggest sin of all.

Do NOT conflate Rings of Power with anything Tolkien. Do not let this parasite of a production be associated with Tolkien in any way because doing so is going to lessen and tarnish the original work.

[hetrosjistin]

Reminder: Rings of Power could never be anything else because they had to hire Tolkien scholars not to avoid problems, but to avoid accidentally making it too close to the original material because the Tolkien Estate categorically refused to allow anyone to use the silmarillion to make a show, but Amazon had the rights to the appendicies from the lord of the rings.

[middle-earth-mythopoeia]

@hetrosjistin uh, no?????? Not using the Silmarillion does not equal making Galadriel's story arc subservient to a man.

Not using the Silmarillion does not equal poor dialogue, writing, costumes and production.

Not using the Silmarillion does not equal screwing up the storyline of how the rings were forged.

Not using the Silmarillion does not equal ELROND KISSING GALADRIEL ON THE MOUTH (yes, that actually happened in the show).

We all know they couldn't use the Silmarillion. That does not excuse ANY of this.

[natalieironside]

I love the concept of Tooks. "Everybody in the Shire is very very businesslike and respectable and has no use for adventures except for this one entire family of mad lads who also run the municipal government"

[natalieironside]

The decision by the kings of Arnor to name the Tooks rightful thanes of the Shire was actually a 3000-IQ play by the Witch-King of Angmar to keep the Tooks far the fuck away from him

[natalieironside]

Ya gotta get 'em from where they'll least expected it

[earendil-was-a-mariner]

Saruman: If the wall is breached, Helm’s Deep will fall.

Wormtongue: Even if it is breached, it will take a number beyond reckoning, thousands, to storm the keep.

Saruman: Tens of thousands.

Wormtongue: But, my lord, there is no such force.

*They walk over to the balcony and see the Uruk-Hai*

Saruman: Did you not notice that I had a giant army outside. It’s incredibly loud, how did you not hear them? They’re not even trying to be quiet. The sound is deafening. 

[earendil-was-a-mariner]

Aragorn: Let the Lord of the Black Land come forth! Let justice be done upon him!

Mouth of Sauron: My lord shall not come and fight thee. A large troll will be in his place!

Aragorn: Why?

Mouth of Sauron: We’ve been acting like he’s just the giant eye, so it would be confusing for people to see his body come and fight. It’s complicated. The troll is easier. 

[robot-roadtrip-rants]

Man is about to break into tears here. He's been waiting a hundred years to hear that.

[pluvio-tea]

The microexpressions in this scene absolutely destroyed me. You can almost see a weight is lifted from Titus' chest, it's almost like he is close to tears. His voice is barely controlled, as if it would tremble if he let it. His worst fear, his greatest shame that he internalized for 200 years, was not true. His brothers did not forsake him. His commander and friend Calgar never stopped trying. His family never believed him to be a traitor.

This is the closest this universe gets to finding out you are, indeed, loved. It's a shooting game about stomping xenos heads, but goddammit, it's also about love and loss, regret and bitterness, paranoia, and trust. Titus regained his family. How he must have grieved, how he must have through himself into the deathwatch, desperately seeking a new brotherhood in his disparate comrades, torturing himself in the hopes of regaining a convoluted idea of redemption.

In the world of Space Marines, Calgar might as well had clutched Titus to his chest and told him "I never stopped thinking about you brother, I knew you were always innocent, I am so sorry I couldn't bring you home sooner, please, forgive me."

[oldinterneticons]

[noelle-ism]

Awesome

[paper-mario-wiki]

try to watch this without laughing or grinning

[badassdemonsword]

yeah man you're right, all of these old ass books ARE like fanfiction. Dantes Inferno is on the same exact level as the fanfiction you write about Jimin having a self lubricating cloaca

[blackheart-biohazards]

😈 You are not bound by the Hays code.

😈 You are allowed to have evil characters who are not punished by the narrative by the end of the story.

😈 You are allowed to have evil characters who win.

😈 You are allowed to have evil characters who make evil look fun and cool.

😈 You are allowed to make your fun, cool evil character the protagonist.

😈 You are allowed to glorify, romanticize and eroticize evil characters and villainous acts.

😈 You are not obligated to teach your audience a moral lesson.

[what-even-is-thiss]

When I grow up I wanna be upper middle class.

[what-even-is-thiss]

I want like… a condo. And enough money to go on vacation sometimes. And maybe a mug.

[sbpstudios]

bro look at thrift stores or garage sale for mugs

i once got a set of four cat mugs for a dollar. one of the best days of my life so far

[what-even-is-thiss]

Maybe I’m tired of going to thrift stores for mugs. Maybe I’m tired of the $5 target mugs. Maybe I want a really nice mug. Not like five hundred nice mugs. Just like… one or two would be nice. You know? Maybe I’d hang one on my wall. I think I’d like that. Owning a wall.

[i-need-glitter]

@what-even-is-thiss

Go to any streets that close for art events, you’ll find at least 1 good potter selling their wares there

I got the cup I use for my bathroom at Las Olas, Florida for their art fair a few years back, it was like $15ish but the potter had a set all in the same color combo of a bowl, 2 sized plates and 2 different mugs. I just wanted the one small cup but I’ve got the card somewhere

At the same art fair a year or two later a different potter was there selling his stuff and that’s who I got one of my tea mugs from for like again $15isb

[what-even-is-thiss]

Again, people are misunderstanding my actual desires represented by the mug.

[what-even-is-thiss]

There you go.

[i-wear-the-cheese]

Every time we go into a Big Fancy Houseware shop just to browse, I stare wistful at the mugs. “We have enough mugs” I will say. But I know I my heart that all the mugs at home are mismatched and old, or secret Santa gifts from across the years. None of them have been purchased solely for the joy of buying a fancy new mug.

[parkasaurus-rex]

Like you could even go to the clearance aisle for mugs. The change of seasons always brings new and interesting things. OR A GOODWILL TRIP? Holy shit this person is going on and on about expensive ass mugs when what you really need in life is to not fall into the trap that capitalism has inevitably laid for all of us that makes us believe wholeheartedly that the only happiness we will find in life is the ability to purchase expensive things and to own expensive things

Go green and try to re-thrift for shit that’s so trivial it takes one slip of the hand to watch it completely fall to pieces

[what-even-is-thiss]

I made this post over a year ago now and inevitably whenever it gains more traction someone will pop up completely misunderstanding me, not understanding that I’d just like to be comfortable. I don’t actually want advice on how to acquire mugs. I own a couple of mugs. I’d just like to be able to have some security. Maybe a pool. Maybe I’d like to own a small amount of property. A condo, maybe. I’d like to be able to travel. You’ll notice that nobody here is giving advice on how to acquire a condo or a vacation. They’re just taking the mug part seriously. All I wanted to do was fantasize about a world where I don’t live in a studio apartment that takes up half of my paycheck in rent alone and maybe I have a stupid white dad device mounted on the wall to showcase my mug collection. Can everyone just shut the hell up about telling me how to acquire mugs? I don’t care about the traps of consumerism! I just wanna be able to afford to visit my aunts sometimes! And so what if I do want an expensive mug? That’s my goddamn business.

[strongorcbutch-deactivated20220]

This is a perfect summary of what it’s like for try to communicate any idea that can’t fit neatly into a single sentence on Tumblr Dot Com.

[melonisopod]

Those “curtains were just blue” memes did irreparable damage to society.

[phantomrose96]

Not missing the meta-textual irony that this has exactly recreated the conversations that happen at society-level where someone from the Younger Generation says “I would just like financial stability. I would just like simple pleasures in life without the vice-grip of financial strain limiting every decision” and the Older Generation think pieces come pouring out like “Oh just make your coffee at home to save $4 :) Oh just limit yourself to one tv streaming service to save $10 a month :) Oh just don’t get the expensive avocado toast they charge $3 for the avocado you know :)”

It’s not about the mug it’s not about the coffee it’s not about the avocado toast. It never was and never will be. It will always be about being able to live a nice life.

[hesperocyon-lesbian]

This is regarding an incident where Israel bombed dozens of Lebanese civilians using explosive pagers they slipped into the supply chain. Never let any of the people in this screenshot try to convince you they aren’t thrilled at the death of civilians as long as those civilians are Arabs

[apas-95]

legitimately just an indiscriminate terror bombing of the sort that would be plainly reviled if it weren't done by israel. slipping explosives into an intercepted shipment of civilian electronics most commonly used by, like, doctors. around 3000 civilians have been injured, and nine died, including a child. but no yeah epic meme, gay tumblr poster, your favourite ethnostate blew up the arab's groins

[analytically]

Can astrologers use astrological charts to understand people's character and lives? Our new study put astrologers to the test

Astrology is very popular — both Gallup and YouGov report that about 25% of Americans believe that the position of the stars and planets can

Astrology doesn't seem to work.

[intimate-mirror]

[performativezippers]

Some highlights:

Astrologers helped design the study

No one did better than random chance, even though they only included people in the study who are experienced with astrology and stated that they expect themselves to do better than random chance

They gave every astrologer a set of 50 things about a person and 5 birth charts to choose from. They weren’t even coming up with the chart themselves!

After taking the test, most thought they nailed it. Zero out of 152 did better than 5 out of 12. None nailed it

Astrologers who rated themselves highly experienced (“world class experts”) did the same or worse as those who said they have limited experience. Both performed the same as random chance

This is hilarious